Fire/Background Information
| }} /Credits|Credits}} /Gallery|Gallery}} /Transcript|Transcript}} /Background Information|Background Information}} }} Production *Chris Carter based Mulder's boyhood experience of having to spend a night guarding, from looters, a friend's house which had recently burned down on a childhood incident that actually happened to Carter himself. "So I have this fear of fire, and I thought I'd give Mulder a fear of fire, as well," Carter related. (The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths and the Movies, p. 43) *Introducing an English former romantic relationship of Mulder's was simply something Chris Carter wanted to do. "I thought it was interesting to show a little bit of Mulder's history by bringing an old girlfriend back," Carter said. "I've always wanted to do a Scotland Yard detective who was a woman." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 26/27, No. 6/1, p. 41) *However, the episode's teleplay involved more between Mulder and Phoebe Green than ended up in the episode's final version. "There was so much more in the script in terms of emotions that they ... were supposed to have," stated Co-Executive Producer James Wong. "There's a lot more to their relationship in the script than there was on the screen." (X-Files Confidential, p. 58) *The script also incorporated a sequence which provided an additional demonstration of Cecil L'Ively's pyrokinetic powers, though this was never produced. "There was a quarter mile of white picket fences catching fire," reported Mark Sheppard, "and other stuff got taken out. It kept getting pared down before we shot it." ( , p. 14) Other instances of the removals from this episode involved thematic material about L'Ively associating the setting of fires with a wedding and the fire itself with a bride. "Chris Carter had done a lot of research into pyromaniacs as well as with other things 'X-Filean', if you know what I mean," Sheppard mused. "In the original script there were a lot more references to the psychological make-up of a pyromaniac .... Chris introduced me to this possibility the marital analogies and although we worked a lot on that it didn't end up staying in." (TV Zone Special #21, p. 28) *The original script of this episode includes a conversation near the end in which Scully comments, "Well, never let it be said that you wouldn't walk through fire for a woman, Mulder." He answers, "And never let it be said that I wouldn't do it for you again, Scully." ( , p. 129) *"Black silk boxer shorts" that Mulder wears in one scene were originally to have been "Jockey underwear". ( , p. 129) *Chris Carter was scripting this episode when the Southern California Wildfires of 1993 began. Co-Executive Producer Glen Morgan recollected, "The weird thing about that script is that Chris had that concept and started writing it, and then LA started burning. I think that fueled him a bit." (X-Files Confidential, p. 58) Carter himself recalled, "I was writing that episode while the hills of Malibu were on fire." (The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths and the Movies, p. 43) *This episode's script went through six drafts. These were dated 9th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 19th and 23rd November 1993. *In this episode's pub scene, immediately before Cecil L'Ively (using the alias Bob the Caretaker) causes fire to stream along the bar, the shooting script says, "Bob ... puts his hand to the brown paper bag he's set on the bar, tipping over the contents of whatever's inside." The script implies a can is inside the bag. However, the episode doesn't show these actions amid all the commotion (at least, not clearly). *The English country estate that appears in this episode's teaser was actually a building located at 1451 Angus Drive, Vancouver. The exterior of the Venable Plaza Hotel was represented by the city's Hotel Vancouver. The party in this episode was initially planned to be filmed in a luxurious-looking ballroom but, due to booking problems, those scenes were instead shot in the mezzanine and adjoining hallway of the Hotel Vancouver. (X Marks the Spot (On Location with The X-Files), pp. 35-36 & 40-41) *Prior to the making of this episode, Chris Carter had been cautioned about the expense and problems that can arise due to working with fire. ( , p. 129) "This is an episode that people were mad at me from the beginning for," he expressed, "because I wanted to do something with fire and it's very hard to work with .... So that was an interesting thing." (X-Files Confidential, p. 57) *When this episode was produced in 1993, creating a lot of the fire with computer graphics – making it much safer for the actors on the set – wasn't an option. Consequently, all the fire herein was real, with actual flames. Mark Sheppard noted, "On that episode the stunts were pretty big! .... It was very real fire, and very frightening." ( , pp. 13 & 14) Chris Carter offered, "heat was actually scary. People got burned." The fire scenes were also very difficult and costly to produce. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 26/27, No. 6/1, p. 41) Reflecting on the difficulties of the fire stunts herein, Co-Executive Producer R.W. Goodwin moaned with mock weariness, "Boy, that was a hard one .... It was a major feat, a real logistical and creative feat, because you wanted it to look good." Because many of the film sequences involving fire were inside, the creative staff had to carefully design and construct the sets in such a way that they were fireproof and allowed the fire to be easily controlled. (X-Files Confidential, p. 57) David Gauthier, who supervised the fire scenes, explained, "We used a lot of propane." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 26/27, No. 6/1, p. 41) Gauthier was not only responsible for helping create the fire but keeping the performers safe too. (TV Zone Special #21, p. 28) *Because Mark Sheppard quit smoking six years prior to the making of this installment, he smoked Honey Rose herbal cigarettes any time he had to for the episode's production. "It was weird to have to fake it!" he exclaimed. ( , p. 13) *Only three of the self-lighting cigarettes were made. Each of these had an incendiary device at its end and a copper wire. The wire ran into the side of Mark Sheppard's mouth, allowing the production personnel to hide it down one side of his face. "The cigarette was the first stunt we did .... I asked the special effects guys to show me how the cigarette worked," Sheppard recollected. "They said that they only had three, but I insisted, and they finally agreed. One of them put one in his mouth, lit it – and it blew up! They were very embarrassed, and fixed them all, taking the magnesium charge out to make it lighter." ( , p. 13) *Precautions were taken for the scene in which Cecil L'Ively, while in a bar, sets one of his own arms ablaze. "When I was being lit up and prepped," commented Mark Sheppard, "there were guys three feet away from me who would put me out in a second. But it was still scary." ( , p. 14) Sheppard was meant to tip over the can inside the brown paper bag and then set fire to the can's contents. He had difficulty with the shot. "My arm was on fire and the can wouldn't open," he clarified. Screaming, Sheppard smashed the can into the bar until it did open. (TV Zone Special #21, p. 28) *Having learned the sleight-of-hand magic trick involving a cigarette for his audition as Cecil L'Ively, the trick was performed by Mark Sheppard on camera. "In the episode, I actually did it in one take," he noted. ( , p. 13) *While filming one scene, David Duchovny suffered a burn on the outside of his left hand that was severe enough to leave a scar. ( , p. 129) Despite this, Mark Sheppard once characterized it as "tiny." (TV Zone Special #21, p. 28) The wound is visible in a scene where Mulder is waiting outside a ballroom and wipes his forehead. Apart from this injury, no other real problems were encountered by the production personnel while filming this episode. ( , p. 129) *In the scene with Agent Mulder and Cecil L'Ively during a fire at the Marsdens' temporary residence in Cape Cod, L'Ively can clearly be seen diving to the ground as the flames burn. This was because Mark Sheppard was finding it too difficult to withstand the immense heat and was afraid his hair was catching fire. ( , p. 14) "I didn't get hurt or burned. I got a little roasted," he remarked, with a laugh. (TV Zone Special #21, p. 28) Sheppard elaborated, "I got a nice tan on the top of my head! .... ''Entertainment Tonight was filming us, and all you can hear after the stunt finishes is 'Cut – did we get the take?' I was going, 'You bastards, you burned my head! " ( , p. 14) R.W. Goodwin added, "''I remember that there was a whole lot of trickery we had to pull off because he was supposed to be standing there when he wasn't. Director Larry Shaw, with very short time to prepare, was able to pull it off." (X-Files Confidential, p. 58) *Multiple means of depicting the Venable Plaza Hotel were utilized. Location Manager Todd Pittson stated, "Actually, the fire which engulfed a room and hallway was filmed on a set built to match the architecture of Vancouver Hotel .... The establishing shot of the hotel was taken from stock footage, whereas the drive-up involved our practical location." (X Marks the Spot (On Location with The X-Files), p. 41) *The production of this installment included two full-body burns, which involved people being covered with fire. (X-Files Confidential, p. 57) The burning characters were the elderly man named Charles, in the teaser, and Cecil L'Ively. The latter instance was the only fire stunt not performed by Mark Sheppard, instead carried out by stuntman J.J. ( , p. 14) Said Sheppard, "There was a stunt double for me and a full-body burn guy ... but I did everything else." (TV Zone Special #21, p. 28) Regarding J.J. specifically, Sheppard explained, "He spent 20 minutes with me beforehand working out what my actions would be so he could match it, then I had to match the screen mask – the copy of my face that he's wearing – in the close-up, which was also done live, not with CGI. They let me do everything else, but they wouldn't let me do that. They lit him up with rubber cement, which is the hottest burning explosive, and exploded him with propane." In fact, J.J. was lit up atop a propane tank. "He went for 28 seconds on this burn, and they shot with three or four cameras. When they got to the end and put him out, they found out that he didn't have any oxygen – and he'd gone for 28 seconds like that!" ( , p. 14) *Five days were allocated for this episode's production. However, the production crew ran out of time. As a result, the installment's teaser, the last footage to be filmed, was shot on the sixth day of the shoot, during a weekend. "Because I'd done so much overtime, I was feeling very generous," Mark Sheppard conceded. "So we went off to this house and shot it at the weekend. They slapped the beard on me, and we filmed it with a minimal crew. It was the only way that we could finish the episode!" ( , p. 14) *Disgruntled by the execution of the relationship between Agent Mulder and Phoebe Green, the editing team decided to make significant changes. James Wong attested, "We ended up cutting a lot of stuff that just didn't work." (X-Files Confidential, p. 58) *James Wong himself was involved in cutting this episode together. Reflected Glen Morgan, "At one point the story was muddled and Jim Wong, in editing, put things in a different way .... That was a situation where you didn't have the time to do an insert and fix it." (X-Files Confidential, p. 58) *For some reason unknown to Mark Sheppard, the footage of his one-take magic trick ended up being edited. "It looked weird," Sheppard observed about the final result. ( , p. 13) The actor saw much of the footage omitted from this installment in general. "They couldn't use a lot of the stuff we filmed because it looked so terrifying," Sheppard revealed. Another omission was from the pub scene: the view of a screaming Mark Sheppard striking a can against the bar, in a desperate struggle to open it. In hindsight, he called this shot "wonderful." (TV Zone Special #21, p. 28) Yet another part of the episode which ended up being cut was the thematic link of Cecil L'Ively humming (as he went about his business) 's " ", which would have reinforced the idea of the killer making mental similarities between arson and weddings. ( , p. 13) *David Duchovny was interested in retaining the footage in which he burned his hand. Chris Carter recounted, "He said, 'You better put that in there, because I got burned in that scene. " (Cinefantastique, Vol. 26/27, No. 6/1, p. 41) Trivia *This episode contains a number of references to , namely: Phoebe Green reminds Mulder that they once made out on the tombstone of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author who created Sherlock Holmes; Phoebe makes a reference to a "three-pipe problem" – an expression used in The Red-Headed League that refers to the idea that a person has to sit and smoke at least three pipes in order to solve a case with the information they have gathered; Scully asks Mulder if "the game is afoot," an expression used many times in the Sherlock Holmes novels; Scully calls Mulder "Sherlock" and he, referring to Holmes' faithful friend and colleague, calls her "Watson". *The character of Malcolm Marsden was named after the series' hairstylist. ( , p. 129) *An X-file referring to the events of this episode is numbered 11214893. 11/21/48 was the birth date of Dori Carter née Pierson, Chris Carter's wife, and the episode was filmed in 1993. *This is the only episode in which Mulder is established as having pyrophobia. This is also the only installment which features Phoebe Green. *The addendum portion of the episode near the end showing Scully typing away at her computer is a reused shot from "Squeeze" when she was working on her profile for Eugene Victor Tooms. You can even see crime scene photos of one of the victims, George Usher, next to the keyboard. Reception *Chris Carter ultimately had a mixed opinion of this installment. "It's a very popular episode, and I'm just somewhat happy with the way it turned out," he admitted. "Having written it and imagined it in certain ways, I think it could have been a lot better. Although I thought it was generally well directed, the show felt very 'wide' to me – very loose and lacking some things." (X-Files Confidential, p. 57) For instance, Carter believed the chemistry between Agent Mulder and Phoebe Green "didn't work as it might." ( , p. 129) *James Wong was similarly left disappointed with how the episode depicts the relationship between Mulder and Phoebe Green. "It didn't play at all, and that should have been the subtext of the whole show," he opined. (X-Files Confidential, p. 58) *Glen Morgan was apparently more forgiving towards the installment. "People have written that they like it," he pointed out. "I like that bit with the cigarette in the beginning where it lights itself. Little things like that are effective." Morgan also commented the order of the story "came out good" thanks to the aforementioned editing by James Wong. (X-Files Confidential, p. 58) *R.W. Goodwin liked the scene in which Cecil L'Ively induces flames to engulf a hallway. "It's just a spectacular moment," Goodwin enthused. (X-Files Confidential, p. 58) *This episode achieved a Nielsen household rating of 6.8, with an audience share of 12. This means that roughly 6.8 percent of all television-equipped households, and 12 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 6.4 million households. ( , p. 248) *On the UK television channel BBC 2, this is the only episode that was moved from the regular Thursday night slot to late on the channel's "Weird Night". This programming shift was due to the installment's content, such as the scenes of pyromania. ( ) *''Cinefantastique'' (Vol. 26/27, No. 6/1, p. 41) rates this episode 3 out of 4 stars. The magazine observes, "While the villain, Cecil L'ively ... is fairly compelling (although the scenes focusing on him last a shade too long), the real interest in this story lies in the resonances of Mulder and Phoebe's past relationship .... Smart, witty and attractive, Phoebe is also cruel and self-destructive, and the smash-up ten years ago between her and Mulder goes a long way towards explaining his hesitancy with women. The inadequate Cecil serves as a combination of Mulder and Phoebe. His fantasy life is reflected in Mulder's inability to get past his failed romance, but even more he is Phoebe, who probably also has spent the decade reliving the relationship. Her identification with Cecil is complete when she congratulates him by shaking his hand after he stages a fire to make himself look like a hero. At least at the end Mulder finally awakens to Phoebe's true nature, while she and Cecil are locked into their destructive states. [Pays|[Amanda Pays]] does an excellent job in making Phoebe almost sympathetic, and Gillian Anderson also stands out." * ( ) credits Chris Carter with inventing Cecil L'Ively, saying that – by doing so – Carter "comes close to creating another Eugene Victor Tooms," but laments, "The episode suffers somewhat as Scully burns with uncharacteristic jealousy over her flamehaired rival Phoebe Green." *In his reference book , writer Robert Shearman scored this episode 1 out of 5 stars. He critiqued, "Some of the fire effects are quite good. But the rest of this – what on earth is going on here? It seems as if Chris Carter is on a mission to undermine Mulder's character as badly as possible .... Carter saddles Mulder with a phobia of fire ... and you can only feel that it's for a '' -like payoff, that Mulder will face his demons to save the day." Shearman went on to criticize Mulder's interactions with fire in the Venable Plaza Hotel and Cape Cod fire scenes, saying they make the viewer "feel embarrassed for him." The writer continued, "''This, though, is nothing to putting him under the spell of a femme fatale so uncharismatic that it beggars belief .... As played by Amanda Pays, whose atonal British accent has the nasal quality of someone drowning in snot, the character is irredeemable. For all Mulder's claims of her brilliance, there can surely be no-one more stupid working at Scotland Yard .... Of course, we don't care about Phoebe Green – her only importance is how much it weakens Mulder's character to see him so helpless in her company. Laid low by fire and an old flame, this isn't a good week for Mulder. Or for anybody else. The plot is so thin it's ridiculous .... This is not a story that has many surprises up its sleeve. It doesn't have much point either .... There is some attempt to suggest L'Ively is ... stalking Lord Marsden because he's attracted to his wife, but since there's even less a spark between them than there is between Phoebe and Mulder, this doesn't convince .... It's telling that the most unnerving scene is the one where L'Ively tries to persuade two young children to smoke; it's utterly pointless, mind you, but at least it's sinister." *After the making of this episode, a certain deletion from the installment was the subject of a query some Internet fans asked Mark Sheppard while they were trying to ascertain whether he really was who he was claiming to be. This occurred shortly after the second season began, when Sheppard first entered an chat room. "What was the song, they were asking," he recalled, "and I realized they knew more about the show than I did!" ( , p. 14) Cast and Characters *Two weeks before Mark Sheppard received a call to audition for this episode, one of his friends introduced him to Gillian Anderson, in passing. He did not, however, spend much time with with Anderson or David Duchovny in front of the camera. "I only got one scene with Gillian and none at all with David," remembered Sheppard. (TV Zone Special #21, p. 28) *In his role as Cecil L'Ively, Mark Sheppard was extremely eager to do as much of his own stunt work as he could. Before Sheppard filmed any of his scenes for this installment, a man from Stunts Canada asked Sheppard if he would be willing to do the stunt where L'Ively's arm catches on fire. "I said, 'If I don't get to do this stunt, I'm not going to do this thing!' He was like, ' Oh great! " ( , p. 14) *Mark Sheppard was puzzled by the elimination of much of Cecil L'Ively's motivation being his pursuance of a particular woman. Sheppard did, though, end up immensely enjoying his involvement in this outing, thereafter reminiscing, "I had so much fun doing the episode." (TV Zone Special #21, p. 28) Category:Behind the scenes